Re: screen, PuTTY, and kernel config

From:

Chris Lieb

Subject:

Re: screen, PuTTY, and kernel config

Date:

Tue, 10 Mar 2009 14:09:56 -0500

User-agent:

Thunderbird 2.0.0.19 (Windows/20081209)

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Micah Iowan wrote:
> Chris Lieb wrote:
>> Florian Bender wrote:
>>> Chris Lieb wrote:
>>>> I have run into two issues getting screen to work with the Linux kernel
>>>> configuration utility (make config).
>>>>
>>>> First, in PuTTY, the display is garbled when the config utility is
>>>> running. I have attached screenshots of the output I am getting
>>>> (PuTTY-garbled.png) and what I get when I'm not running in screen
>>>> (PuTTY-good.png). This problem does not affect me if I do a console login.
>>>>
>>>> Second, if I am in a screen session and SSH into another server running
>>>> screen (resulting in a 'nested' screen session), the arrow keys do not
>>>> work in the kernel configuration utility. Other keys seem to work ok,
>>>> just not the arrow keys. The arrow keys work fine when I am at a
>>>> prompt. This problem does not seem to be associated with PuTTY since a
>>>> console login exhibits the same behavior.
>>>>
>>>> Does anyone know how to fix these?
>>>>
>>>> Thanks,
>>>> Chris Lieb
>>> Hi,
>>> when using Curses dialogs (I assume that eLinks has the same problem)
>>> within screen, changing the character encoding in PuTTY to UTF-8 usually
>>> works. I'm sure this depends on $LANG on the linux machine.
>>> Regards,
>> Thanks, that solved my first problem. Now to figure out how to get the
>> arrow keys to work in a curses application. It's probably some cryptic
>> incantation of termcap that I need.
>
> IIRC, PuTTY claims to be an "xterm" in $TERM by default, without
> actually being 100% compatible with true xterm (this same problem exists
> with other terminals, such as Terminal.app and gnome-terminal).
>
> GNU ncurses has a specific entry for putty, so you might want to "tic"
> the latest terminfo definitions from ncurses (it's in a file named
> misc/terminfo.src, IIRC). And then, of course, have PuTTY set TERM to
> "putty". (You'd need to compile these terminfo descriptions on each
> system you use screen on.)
What do you mean by "tic" the latest terminfo? I was unable to find a
file called terminfo.src on my system using slocate.
> As a quick-fix solution, you may find that placing "termcapinfo xterm*
> ks@:ke@" in your ~/.screenrc's will help. It certainly did for a
> different (but similar) problem that cropped up on IRC.
Adding that line to my ~/.screenrc actually broke arrow keys in a normal
screen session.
> Otherwise, typing your cursor keys while running
> cat-under-screen-under-putty, and comparing with what terminfo/termcap
> say about what the cursor keys should be, is often illuminating.
I get the same output from cat whether I am in PuTTY-screen or
PuTTY-screen-ssh-screen, even though the latter does not work in curses
applications.
For reference, I have included my .screenrc at the end of the message.
I don't know what some of the stuff in it does since it originally came
from the internet.
Chris
- -------------------------------------------------------------------------
~/.screenrc
- -------------------------------------------------------------------------
activity "%c activity -> %n%f %t"
autodetach on
altscreen on
bell "%c bell -> %n%f %t^G"
defflow auto
defscrollback 10000
defutf8 on
msgwait 0 # 1 second messages
startup_message off # disable the startup splash message
vbell_msg "[[[ ding ]]]"
vbell off
termcapinfo xterm 'hs:ts=\E]2;:fs=\007:ds=\E]2;screen\007'
# I got this from you when I was trying to fix the numpad
termcapinfo screen* ks@:ke@
# this is all one line
caption always '%{gk}[%H][%= %{wk}%?%-Lw%?%{=b kR}(%{W}%n*%f
%t%?(%u)%?%{=b kR})%{= kw}%?%+Lw%?%?%= %{g}][%{Y}%l%{g}]%{=b C}[%m/%d
%C%a]%{W}'
# end of 'this is all one line'
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